Flea on the elephant

You can try to “influence” your CEO. Change their mind.

But it’s often too late. A waste of time.

Consider the story “The Flea and The Elephant”

I can’t tell you how many times I walked out of a meeting frustrated by the directive I was being given by leadership.

I’d think:

“Why are we doing this?”

“We should be doing (this other thing) instead”

“I thought we were focused on (this other thing)?”

“None of this makes sense!”

“How do I change their mind?”

Now, you can try to change their mind. You can go searching for data and examples to bring them over to your side. Sometimes it works. But more often, it's a waste of time.

There’s a great story written by author, John David Mann, called “The Flea and The Elephant.” I first heard about it on the My First Million podcast.

Here’s the story in a nutshell:

Once there was a flea who believed he was king of the world.

Each day this flea would hop on his elephant and tell it where to go.

But the elephant had other plans.

And the elephant was an elephant.

So naturally, the flea was dragged all over the place.

Never where it wanted to go.

But one night the flea has an idea.

He turns to the elephant and says, “About tomorrow … um, what are YOUR plans?”

John sums up the moral of the story like this:

“If you are a flea riding an elephant, before you make any plans, you might want to check out what your elephant has in mind.”

Too often, founding PMMs work in a silo on things like positioning, messaging, and content, only to get frustrated when their founder derails it.

So, if you’re a PMM working directly with a founder, before you make any plans, you might want to check out what they have in mind.

In other words, talk to them, get their perspective. Know what's on their wishlist and see where they want to go. You're then in a way better position to help steer the ship and influence in a way they'll actually be receptive to.

Or keep trying to change their mind. Up to you.